by Hans Fallada
With raised voice: ‘Now go home, farmers!’
3
The Reconciliation Committee at Work
I
At the corner of Calvinstrasse and Propstenstrasse the garden of the wholesaler Manzow abuts on that of the haberdasher Meisel. Both men are on the town council. Manzow as council leader, even—the outcome of a deal with the SPD—while Meisel, a bundle of energy, remains Altholm’s unofficial news bureau.
It’s a fine July morning, not too hot, a cool breeze is coming in off the sea, taking the edge off the sun and stirring the leaves in the garden where Manzow is taking a stroll. He has just crawled out of bed, drunk a pot of black coffee, and is trying to get the taste of yesterday’s booze-up out of his mouth with a lot of chaw.
Manzow has two nicknames in Altholm: the ‘White Negro’ and the ‘Children’s Friend’. White Negro on account of his features, the thick lips, low forehead and frizzy hair, and Children’s Friend, because . . .
He’s in the habit of peeking over the fences of the neighbouring gardens, even though he knows all the mothers have strictly told their little ones not to make peepee in the garden, or indeed anywhere else near Manzow’s fence. It’s not impossible that an adorable little creature of eight or nine might . . .
But it’s his Party colleague Meisel, master of a four-storey emporium and a team of seventy rag-and-bone men, whom he sees.
‘Morning, Franz.’
‘Morning, Emil.’
‘Did you stay up late last night?’
‘Till five. There was a jumped-up policeman who tried to tell us that three was the curfew hour. I told him where to go.’
‘Really?’ Meisel is listening keenly.
‘I wrote out a bye-law, saying that in my capacity as leader of the council I was delaying the curfew until six o’clock.’
‘Wonder what Gareis will say to that?’
‘Gareis? Nothing! Do you think he can afford to make trouble for me now that the boycott’s begun and the point-to-point is off?’
‘I went to the station earlier,’ says Meisel, ‘to get a shave. Punte says he’s going to have to let three apprentices go. The farmers have stopped coming in for a shave or a trim.’
‘Gareis ought to shave them himself—he probably remembers how from his old man.’
‘I think Gareis has been soft-soaping the farmers for long enough.’
The men cackle, and a few birds are scared off.
‘Krüger at the station says he’s down two hectolitres on market days.’
‘All the small businesses are complaining.’
‘I’ll tell you something,’ says Manzow pompously. ‘You know my business. I never had all that much custom from the town. But the pedlars used to come and buy from me: haberdashery, scents, soaps, braces, material, all their stock in fact.
‘And now they’re saying they can’t buy from me any more. The farmers ask them: Where are you from?—Altholm.—Then you just go back to Altholm.—No one’s buying.’
‘Everyone from Altholm has a tale to tell. The travelling salesmen in oils and lubricants and machine parts—they’re being chased off the farms. The farmers have got themselves a list of all the Altholm plates.’
‘It’s madness,’ moans Manzow. ‘Are we going to have a drink before the meeting, by the way?’
‘Sure.—And Meckel, who runs the driving school, he says he’s lost seventeen pupils from the country districts.’
‘The agricultural college has no one at all registered for autumn.’
‘Yes, and all the while that ridiculous Frerksen is running around in his uniform, more full of himself than ever.’
‘Don’t say that. Don’t you know he went to Stolpermünde on holiday? They managed to get rid of him inside a week, do you know how? Every morning there was fresh shit on his sandcastle, and their rooms were crawling with bugs.’
‘Apparently his son said that when the demonstration was over he said all the farmers were criminals and deserved to be beaten to death . . .’
‘Even Frerksen’s own parents said Fritz shouldn’t have gone after the farmers with sabres.’
‘They’ve stopped talking to each other.’
‘Gareis can’t keep him any longer.’
‘Well, we’ll hear about that later today. You are coming, aren’t you?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And we’ll have a little drink beforehand, so it’s not so dull?’
‘Tucher’s all right with you?’
‘I’d rather Lieschen’s myself. Then we can get in a bit of filth as well.’
‘Keen on the little girls again, are we?’
‘Always. Always. Pluck the rose before it blows.’
‘Wonderful. I must tell my missus that.’
The men go off into another round of cackles, and the birds get another fright.
II
At twelve noon in Mayor Gareis’s big office some thirty gentlemen are assembled: the masters of the guilds, the representatives of the various retail associations, the manufacturers, the director of the Revenue Department, Revenue Councillor Berg, Heinsius and Pinkus from the fourth estate, a man of the cloth, Bishop Schwarz, a cinema owner, the entire magistracy and numerous town councillors.
The gentlemen are in animated conversation, everyone has some piece of frightful news to share. The press is busy taking notes.
Still no Gareis.
‘What’s keeping him?’
‘He’s still in negotiations about the horse tournament.’
‘Golly, if that goes down the pan too! Six thousand farmers spending all of three days in Altholm!’
‘Six thousand? Make that ten. Gareis has done some real damage.’
‘Gareis? I blame Frerksen!’
Medical Councillor Dr Lienau—the Stahlhelm badge prominent on his lapel—leaps into action: ‘Gareis? Frerksen? They’re all one and the same, if you ask me. Pinko trash. What I want to know is where’s Stuff, the only nationalist reporter here?’
Heinsius of the News knows. ‘Stuff’s not been invited.’
‘What? Not invited! And you of the press stand for it? Where’s your solidarity?’
‘He wrote about police terror.’
‘Well? And wasn’t that what it was? Anyway, aren’t you now working for the same boss?’
‘Oh no. We’re nothing to do with Herr Stuff. Completely separate editorially.’
‘I can’t believe our press representatives—’
‘Ssh! Gareis!’
‘Gareis!’
‘Gareis!!’
He walks in, bigger than all of them, heavier than all of them. Greets a few people here and there. Almost while still moving, behind his chair, the chairback in his hand, he starts to speak: ‘Gentlemen, please sit down.’
Scrapes of chair legs, whispers, a certain amount of toing and froing.
And Gareis is off: ‘Gentlemen. Thank you for coming. A warm welcome to the distinguished representatives of commerce, trade and craft in our town, to the authorities, the church and, last but not least, the press.’
A voice growls: ‘Where’s Stuff?’
‘Correct. There is no Stuff here. Would have had no business being here either, as he wasn’t invited.—Today’s subject is known to all of you: the farmers’ boycott, and our measures against it.
‘One other thing before we get going. The demonstration—“Bloody Monday” as the absent press representative so effectively and destructively dubbed it—remains off the agenda.
‘We here, gentlemen, can’t make up our minds whether mistakes were made. Every one of us is touched to some degree. The minister has called for a report. That’s where the decision will be made.
‘So I would ask you kindly to keep the events of Monday out of the discussion.’
Pause. Gareis begins afresh—really, he does.
‘Gentlemen, we all know that the movement that goes by the name of the Bauernschaft imposed its boycott against our town as a protest against the behaviour
of the Altholm police.
‘I’ll pass over the fact that this boycott is very premature and unjust in its application, setting aside the question of its justification. You might say that at this moment in time the farmers aren’t able to be patient and just.
‘And I’ll just quickly make the point that this boycott affects only the innocent. If the police really are the guilty parties, I and those under me continue to draw their salaries. You are the ones to suffer.’
‘Quite right!’
‘The farmers’ leaders can’t have overlooked that. If they wanted to impose their boycott regardless, that seems to me to indicate that they are driven more by propaganda objectives than indignation about the 26th of July.
‘And I can also let you into the secret that the farmers are by no means united behind this boycott. In confidence I tell you that there were animated scenes at their nocturnal meeting on the Lohstedt Heath. My source assures me that it was the intervention of Reimers at the eleventh hour that brought victory. It was not an idea that came from the farmers. My source—’
‘Will you name names?!’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Medical Councillor? But I’m not in the business of betraying my sources.’
‘I don’t care for—’
‘Nothing, Councillor. Here we play by my rules. You’re free to go if you don’t like what I’m telling you.—
‘Now all that may be as it is, but we’re saddled with the boycott. The town is full of wild rumours of the effectiveness of the boycott. Gentlemen, don’t let yourselves be taken in. The boycott has very little effect—’
‘Oho!’
‘Tripe!’
‘It’s ruinous!’
‘Absolutely!’
‘—Altholm is an industrial town. Its purchasing power is vested in the proletariat. Surely you won’t suppose the farmers have ever done much buying in Altholm? After they’ve finished marketing, maybe the good wife would buy some thread, and the man a glass of beer. Nothing of any consequence.
‘Yes, the odd travelling salesman has been sent packing. But rest assured, the farmers wouldn’t have bought anything off him anyway, farmers aren’t flush before harvest-time. It’s just a glorious excuse for the farmer to say: “You’re from Altholm, so I’m not buying anything.”
‘But gentlemen, even if things were different, even if the boycott were catastrophic, we could still do nothing worse than talk it up. If we keep saying: “Boycott, what boycott? The boycott is just a rumour propagated by the Bauernschaft newspaper”—then, gentlemen, the boycott will be over inside a month.
‘We need to combat ignorance in our own town. Of course we can’t have merchant Schulze, who has had thirty pairs of trousers hanging in his shop that no one wants, going to merchant Schmidt and saying: “That farmers’ boycott has cost me thirty pairs of trousers in sales.” And we can’t have continual agitation in the press, little disturbing news items, much less continual talk about police terror. In our moment of need we have to stand together.
‘Here among us we have the editor Herr Heinsius, a loyal son to our town, and a passionate supporter of patriotic causes. I think he will today agree to wrap a cloak of silence around the events of the 26th of July. You shrug your shoulders, Herr Heinsius, but I can see you will soon be nodding your head.’
Rehfelder barracks: ‘Stuff! Editor Stuff!’
‘Gentlemen, let’s not worry our heads about Stuff. I think you’re underestimating the power and influence of Herr Heinsius here. If Herr Heinsius declares the moderate press will be silent, then Herr Stuff will be silent with it.—And of course, Herr Heinsius, I’m silent myself.
‘Those were two things I wanted to put to you: deny the effect of the boycott. Silence on the 26th of July.
‘The third—well, I don’t exactly want to impose a counter-boycott on the farmers. I’m quite happy for them to continue to come to market here. But if gentlemen here would tell their lady wives to support our own local businesses in their purchases, especially when it’s a matter of farm produce . . . well, I’m sure such a modest hint would have its effect too. We know who wears the trousers where the men in this room are concerned . . .’
Grateful laughter.
‘Gentlemen, all round me I see contented, mirthful faces. You know some things may look black from a distance, but closer to they’re more like white. There’s one thing you may be sure of, the inconvenience the farmers are putting us to right now is tiny compared to the advantages we enjoy on the other side.’
‘Piffle!’
‘I have started talks with a number of workers’ associations. They are almost universally of the view that Altholm should be, so to speak, compensated for the losses occurring through the farmers. The workers will hold their meetings in Altholm.
‘All of that will bring footfall and increased custom to our town. And, compared to that, the cancellation—or postponement—of the equestrian event is really rather minor.
‘I now throw open the floor.’
Mayor Gareis sits down abruptly and, with lowered eyelids, awaits the storm that his last announcement is bound to provoke.
III
Political Adviser Stein, the dark, bespectacled little man, gets up and nervously reads from a piece of paper: ‘First to ask to speak was Chairman Besen. I call upon Herr Besen to speak.’
Political Adviser Stein ducks back among the bobbing and weaving heads. The chairman of the Guild of Landlords and Publicans rises under his crown of white hair. ‘Well, gentlemen, what shall I say . . . ?’
‘If you don’t know, don’t bother!’
‘What shall I say? As usual, Mayor Gareis has given us a super little speech, and I think won over almost all of us. I came here feeling pessimistic, Altholm is quite depressed at the moment, and then the farmers’ boycott on top of that, which is affecting the hospitality industry very badly . . . But when I heard the proposals of the mayor, I thought: Yes, that will work . . .
‘Yes, gentlemen, and then we hear offhand that the riding competition has been cancelled. And we are comforted by some vague promise of workers’ meetings, well, who knows?
‘I certainly don’t want to upset the mayor and his Party. But we publicans know what workers get through at such meetings, and what farmers get through. And I have to say, Mayor, with respect, you can bring all the labour organizations in the world to Altholm and they won’t make up for the one horse show.
‘I would also like to stress that it was the Chronicle—for which the mayor had so little good to say today—that first drew attention to the boycott several days ago, and the possibility of the tournament being cancelled. I went to see you that day, Mayor, and you told me that wasn’t true, the horse show was staying in Altholm. It seems it wasn’t the Chronicle that was unreliable, but yourself . . .
‘So, gentlemen, we in the hospitality sector have held a survey on the losses we incur through missing out on the horse show. We carefully checked the figures we were given, we made adjustments, and even then we reached the horrendous number of twenty-one thousand marks. Representatives of other sectors will no doubt have their own submissions to make . . .
‘In view of these facts, I’m inclined to think we shouldn’t get into a tussle with the farmers, and make no mistake about it, what the mayor is proposing is a fight.
‘Almost all of us are connected in some way to the countryside, and I suggest we make use of our connections. I suggest we elect a committee to work on a reconciliation with the farmers, and that this committee gets round the negotiating table with farmers’ representatives at an early date.’
Chairman Besen has said his piece and Political Adviser Stein gives Medical Councillor Dr Lienau the floor.
‘Gentleman, look at the mess we’re in! The three of us, representatives of the Nationalist movement, have issued warning after warning, but has anyone listened to us? Of course not. They wanted compromises with the Reds, and now we’re up the creek!
‘We’ve just listened to t
he rather astonishing presumption of Mayor Gareis, who invites us here only to say, yes, I’m afraid the police have made a rickets of things, does anyone have an idea how to make them better again.
‘I move that we assembled here deplore the recent police terror, and express profound regret to the farmers.’
‘Merchant Braun has the floor.’
‘Yes, gentlemen, I feel rather like Herr Besen. I too was pessimistic, then a little hopeful, and now I see everything in pretty bleak terms. The suggestion I want to make is combining the mayor’s position with Herr Besen’s. In other words, try to negate the boycott, and open immediate talks.’
‘Bishop Schwarz.’
‘Sirs! I represent no material interests. I assume too, that I have only been asked to listen. But as a representative of the Church, I would like to warn against setting out on the road that Mayor Gareis urges.
‘We are supposed to say that the boycott is ineffectual, even though we hear on every side of the damage that it does. We are thus being asked, putting it bluntly, to lie. But, gentlemen, it has always been the case that in the long run honesty is the best policy.
‘As a representative of the Church, I can only urge peace. Make your peace with the farmers. Gentlemen, Herr Besen’s proposal is the right one: elect a committee, negotiate with the farmers. And do what Medical Councillor Lienau says as well: express your regret. You can do that without taking a position. Without getting into the whys and wherefores of the thing, it does remain humanly regrettable. Say as much. There’s no disgrace to that, no need to feel ashamed.
‘If you follow that path, you will be sure of the support of the Holy Church.’
‘Editor-in-chief Heinsius, of the News.’
‘Gentlemen, respected listeners! You all know how rarely I leave my editor’s office. I trust to the electric spark to carry news of what’s going on in the world into my little cubbyhole. Only when a man is quiet, away from the fuss and bother of opinions, is his ear acute enough to hear the pulse-beat of time.
‘If I have departed from habit on this occasion, if I, as the representative of the greatest newspaper of our town, condescend to enter the arena of dispute and make so bold as to address you, then it’s only because from the very outset we have followed the developments with great concern.